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No one should die... in pain...
"And lo, vile beasts did rise.
Leaving naught in their wake but blood and ash.
Sun scorches earth and boils seas...
And our sins ascend unto the heavens—
Three dooms to unmake all we were."
— Emet-Selch

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    Endwalker (6.0) 
  • The Final Days have begun and Hydaelyn is burning, with Fandaniel having kept his promise of reenacting the apocalypse that felled the world of the ancients, down to and including summoning back the Terminus beasts in order to bring about the end he so desires.
    • From the full intro of this expansion, Terminus monsters are pouring into the world wholesale similar to what we saw during the end of Amaurot. Enough to block out the skies and bring ruin to places that you would think would be mostly safe.
    • The launch trailer is even worse, as we get close-ups of some of the Terminus beasts as they go about devouring civilization. Unlike the simply destructive Voidsent or Ashkin, or the majestically instinctual Sin Eaters, the Terminus only seem to murder and convert for the sake of pure destruction and violence while looking like walking night terrors.
  • Also from the launch trailer, one of the dungeons looks to have the skies red with blood-like veins in the air, while giant balls of darkness float and leak from above, looking like the apocalypse is mere minutes away from destroying everything in one fell swoop.
  • During the echo flashback when Fandaniel's true origins are revealed, the player is given a glimpse at the Deadly Decadent Court that the Allagan Empire was. You get to hear about an experiment where an unsuspecting man was given the head of a bull for ENTERTAINMENT. The noble even gleefully recalls the man attempting to scream in terror and only managing guttural growling. The entire affair is so brief, and overshadowed by the other horrors in the expansion yet its horror so much more horrific because of the sheer cruelty. This was the man chosen by Emet-Selch to become Fandaniel.
  • Anima is here, and it's just as nightmare-inducing as it was in its home game. It represents the desire of the Garlean people to be saved from the fall of their Empire, forms the core of the Tower of Babil, and to create it, Varis's corpse was used. (It's heavily implied in the Tower of Zot that he was dismembered so that his body parts could be used to create each of the towers.) All of the suffering caused by the Telophoroi... it all stems from Anima, the Eikon of Eikons.
  • Garlemald, the capital city of supposedly one of the most technologically advanced nation on all of Eorzea, is now reduced to nothing but miles and miles of rubble... Just what sort of civil war following Varis' death happened that the damage is so total is still unclear.
    • Fandaniel played all sides against the middle, removing key figures that were preventing war and leaving the rest paranoid enough to go all-out in the city itself. Urban combat with magitek and further prodding by Fandaniel then reduced the Garleans' "shining city" to the ruined husk we see, with whatever buildings that weren't leveled stripped clean to build the Tower of Babil.
  • Relatively early in the main questline, Zenos and Fandaniel use Aulus mal Asina's soul-manipulating tech to pull a Body Swap - putting your soul into the body of a random Imperial soldier, and Zenos's soul into yours. Wearing your face (complete with a gleeful smirk), Zenos departs to kill everyone back at base camp - leaving you to rush after him in the hopes of stopping the slaughter. The problem? Not only is there a literal army of tempered soldiers and magitek blocking your way, but you have nothing at your disposal. What follows is a mad dash through hordes of enemies, culminating in an incredibly strict Active Time Maneuver simply to keep your heart from stopping through sheer willpower.
    • The helplessness the player is made to feel in this situation cannot be understated. From the very beginning, there's a timer on-screen (implicitly, how long you have until Zenos reaches Camp Broken Glass). You are initially pitched against a single tempered soldier... and in your normal body, with all your equipment and abilities, it would be no problem. But in the body of an ordinary Garlean soldier? You're left with a mere fraction of health and no way to regenerate outside of med kits scavenged from corpses and destroyed magitek. Taking on even just one tempered soldier is difficult. Being caught by more than one? And if you don't have any med kits to spare? Not to mention the magitek enemies, which, safe to say, are impossible to handle without magitek armor of your own. It's a race against time, and overwhelming opponents.
    • If you inspect the corpse of the tempered soldier, the game makes it very clear that, up until now, you have been using non-lethal force to subdue your enemies so that they can be cured. But this time, in a weaker body, you had no choice but to kill him, because it's him or you. It's made very clear that this is exactly how Fandaniel wanted you to feel.
    • This whole scenario puts The Stinger of Shadowbringers in a new light. Not too long ago, Zenos was in the exact same situation the Warrior of Light is in, and yet even in the body of a lowly soldier, he was still able to defeat Elidibus and force him to flee for his life. While Zenos did have the benefit of possessing an Eorzean and thus could manipulate aether, giving him a bit more of an advantage than the Warrior of Light, it really shows just how monstrously powerful Zenos has become since Stormblood. What makes this doubly frightening is what Zenos could have been capable of doing had he not been stopped in time; Zenos on his own is already powerful enough, but him having the absurd power that the Warrior of Light has in addition? No one would be able to stop him.
    • Regardless of how much time is left on the clock, by the time you finally make it back to the camp, Zenos is mere nanoseconds from attacking Alisaie and G'raha. Had the Warrior of Light been but a second longer, two of their closest friends would be dead by their own hand.
    • As your soul starts leaving the imperial soldier's body, Zenos looks straight at you with the most evil smile on your body, gleefully declaring that he will slaughter all of your friends for the hell of it before coming for you. The way he looks at the screen also makes it look like he's taunting YOU, the player.
    • The whole scenario is just extremely uncomfortable at the very least. Zenos basically forces himself onto your body without your consent, and makes it do horrible things against your will. For several players, this scene carried some horrible rape undertones, and made them go from annoyance towards Zenos, to utterly murderous hatred of him.
  • "Remember when I told you I wanted to die, and take everyone with me? I meant it."
  • The moment you slay Zodiark, you get hit with a shocking revelation: Fandaniel wanted you to kill Zodiark. By doing so, you effectively upset the natural order of the world, bringing on the Final Days anyway. You've seen them in Emet-Selch's recreation of Amaurot's Final Days, but here they are in person.
    • Unlike the Terminus beasts that led to the downfall of Amaurot and the old world, the 'blasphemies' seen in Endwalker are not merely summoned - after all, there is nobody left with the sort of creation magic required. Every Terminus monster you fight, this time around, Was Once a Man. Worse still, anyone can turn so long as they fall into despair, a chain reaction starting as simply as one unlucky schmuck having a bad day - and we do mean anyone, you see children transform on-screen and even babies aren't safe. As the tragedy in Radz-at-Han shows, it can snowball fast.
    • The first boss of Vanaspati, the Terminus Snatcher, has an Eyeless Face with additional mouths on its shoulders. Its main attack, Mouth Off, attacks using photorealistic mouths that speak, weaponizing Uncanny Valley to unnerve.
    • When you kill a blasphemy, what happens to the person that turns? Nothing. Rather, they turn to nothing. They don't get the repose of going to the aetherial sea, they just disintegrate to nonexistence. Y'shtola, who can only see through aether, can't see them because they're empty husks whose aether, in her words, crumbled away like dry mud. The dire straits of the situation is underlined by the fact that she's deathly silent when taken into Vanaspati, unable to express her unflappable snark.
      • The Healer Role Quest alleviates this somewhat by possibly showing a slain blasphemy moving on to an afterlife with others who did not die as blasphemies but adds another bit of nightmare fuel. While there is in fact 'something' left that moves on, however Meteion/the Terminus Effect make it LOOK like the soul is completely destroyed, likely in order to fuel despair in those that can see Aether (like the ancients are shown to) potentially furthering the chain of transformations. Additionally, Meteion captures either their souls or the aether that makes them up, completely preventing their reincarnation.
    • One particularly horrid scene during the attack on Radz-at-Han has a Blasphemy corner a terrified mother and her equally terrified infant daughter. The Blasphemy proceeds to grab the mother by the head, snap her neck, and then throw her corpse which is still holding the baby into a nearby pool of water. Only the quick intervention of the Warrior of Light and Vrtra saves the child's life. When you examine the mother's body, the narration helpfully exposits that her final moments were spent in unimaginable agony, and that the only solace is that it was a quick death.
  • The Unsundered Ancients themselves are shown to be displaying a certain disturbing Blue-and-Orange Morality despite the utopian aspect of their society. They eliminate their creations if they are "unfit" for their star. But instead of, say, inanimate broken furniture or some fictional writing that need to be scrapped, they are destroying fully sentient living beings that they created themselves. While culling overly-carnivorous species might be understandable, it can still come across as cold-hearted and disturbing. It is this mindset that gnaws away at Hermes long before Meteion's report finally sends him over the edge. On the other hand, the researchers are very careful over this decision, and also put a point on making sure if a creation is an arcane entity, or has become a living being by being inhabited by a soul. While they're more ignorant over their creations' feelings, they're still not doing this blindly, and are shown to mourn and pray for the souls of the creations that have become living beings and have to be returned to the star (Hythlodaeus is an example of this, praying for a creature that the party had to kill in Ktisis Hyperboreia).
  • Ultima Thule is essentially an Eldritch Location at the edge of the universe, where dynamis has dominance over aether. The sky is an uncanny violet starscape, it's hard to see anything beyond the sickly green fog, and everything here just...exists. Not living, just existing as shades of emotion on a dead star. It all just feels unnerving and wrong. The droning music that (initially) plays while you're there emphasizes the otherworldly uncanniness.
    • What occurs in Ultima Thule is even worse than the realm itself. The only way to proceed in multiple sections is for someone to confront beings with ultimate despair, die and then have their own positive dynamis affect their surroundings. Thancred is the first to go, after confronting Meteion in the Ragnarok, his demise leading to the aether that lets the Warrior of Light and the Scions proceed without quite literally choking out. The first island features no Aether Currents or means to fly, thus leading to Estinien's demise as he confronts a dragon unable to accept the potential of dragons and man being able to live as one. Y'shtola and Urianger confront the Ea, beings who abandoned their bodies in pursuit of science and concluding that knowledge itself is a poison, which Y'shtola obviously objects to. G'raha Tia declares to Stigma 1, leading intelligence for a warlike and imperialistic civilization of people turned machines, that living is itself a positive purpose. Alphinaud and Alisiae face their demise and seemingly help expose some of the last pieces of positivity in Meteion, by declaring fear is nothing to be worried about and how allies and friends are more than capable of helping them bear the burden. For the first time in the Warrior of Light's career, they aren't just alone as the vanguard... they are absolutely alone with naught but their memories and Meteion.
  • Meteion's slow spiral to despair has some chilling imagery to go along with it. In your time on Elpis, she gets transmissions from her sisters that causes her to have a mental breakdown that affects you, too. Your vision is shadowing in, and when it zooms in on Meteion's face, her eyes black out and she starts crying black primordial tears, and then the imagery suddenly cuts out, with no one else knowing what you just experienced. You would be forgiven to assume you were undergoing Sanity Slippage.
  • Meteion's attack on the Ragnarok is chilling all on its own as without any exertion on her the ship systems die, mentally assaults everyone, and leaves them unable to breathe. But even as all that is happening there are split-second, full screen close-up cuts of Meteion herself as if she's not just attacking the Scions, but trying to go after the player as well.
  • Dear god, the Dead Ends. The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of Endwalker and an account of Meteion's travels, and it's brutal - basically Amaurot Part 2, showing the Final Days of three other worlds. First off is a Bloody Bowels of Hell-esque apocalypse on an aquatic world stricken by a flesh-warping plague, the second world is a wartorn hellscape in which freedom fighters fight a global power (said global power also fighting its own omnicidally rogue superweapons that are killing everyone) ending with a global citizen effectively nuking civilization. Finally is an idyllic world where the populace achieved perfection...and lost all purpose in life after figuring out life's secrets (much like the Ea, meaning they probably discovered heat death too), subsequently summoning a Primal to commit mass suicide. It's no wonder why Meteion became a nihilist, frankly.
    • Moreover, the three Ends aren't random or arbitrary. An affliction that warps the bodies and minds of those affected, caused by overextending forces trying to secure their world and prosperity? An endless war constantly trying to introduce newer and more powerful superweapons, to create a global coalition? A world of robed, masked figures, who were seeking to achieve a perfect world? It's the First's Flood of Light, the Source (particularly the war with Garlemald), and the World Unsundered, respectively. It can't be random that she chose the last vision to show as being one that mirrored the world she left... and perhaps show what could have happened had the Ascians succeeded.
      • Not only that, but it was hinted that at least in the last world of prosperity and peace, Meteion asking her question lead to the inhabitants second guessing everything they knew on what made them happy and gave life purpose,deciding death was preferable.
  • Whenever a shard is destroyed by a calamity, its aether pours into the Source, which triggers a calamity there as well. Endwalker reveals that the reverse can also happen; if the Final Days destroys the Source, then all shards would be destroyed along with it. Thancred is noticeably disturbed by this revelation since it would mean Ryne, who he fought so hard to protect, would also die.
  • The concept of Meteion and her weaponization of the Despair Event Horizon. She was, alongside her identical sisters, designed to help navigate the stars of space and bring back to Hermes the answers of far and distant civilizations on other worlds once he grew dissatisfied with the Blue-and-Orange Morality of his own people. What he didn't account for is if all those distant stars were wiped of all life or wished, in time, for their own demises in their misguided strive for perfection. This young, innocent girl that is able to read, speak and think in raw emotion is so overcome by every single one of her sisters having nothing but hate, despair and misery to report, that it all suppresses her original personality beneath the tidal wave of insanity — and causes her to use her emotional powers to bring countless other civilizations to their end thinking that since death is the inevitable outcome, the only mercy able to be granted for all life is to cause it until none remains to suffer anymore.
  • Meteion's destruction is one thing, but that is only part of her plan. Her end goal is downright chilling. As she explains, while she can deliver people from "life", death is just another step. Ultimately, all souls return to their star or to a greater flow, to be reborn, to experience pain again through life. She wants to free people from their suffering. How does she plan to do that? By trapping every soul in existence inside a dead sun, an "egg", inside which life is unable to stir. An egg that would never hatch. She built a gigantic prison to trap the very idea of life itself, to prevent it from flourishing ever again. As horrifying the Final Days may be, this perspective is the most disturbing of all.
    Meteion: True salvation lies not in dying. It lies in not being born.
  • The Phoinix, second escaped beast encountered within Pandæmonium. A failed earlier attempt at making a Phoenix resulted in this... thing that only superficially has the qualities of one. Three heads, back antlers, two sets of wings, an eye-like formation on its chest; It is a creature of ceaseless wrath that lives in a chamber resembling a ruined and perpetually burning countryside. It represents nothing of the warmth of fire but only its ceaseless destructive power in a red and black flame. It alternates between a birdlike cawing and a utterly demonic scream, and that barely prepares for the fact that its resurrection powers don't work right. It brings the Sun Bird adds back as... black one eyed tentacled heart creatures.
  • After completing 6.2's main scenario quests, a sidequest opens in which a friendly Hecteyes goes into details on the pasts of Scarmiglione and Barbariccia before they became voidsent, and how they were recruited as Golbez's archfiends.
    • Scarmiglione was once a miqo'te base commander who was Buried Alive as punishment for hiding when all of the soldiers under his command died defending a fortress from an eidolon. Though he survives and manages to claw his way out of his would-be grave, he ended up terrifying everyone who saw him dig himself up, not helped by the fact that he didn't acknowledge anyone else and walked off muttering like a madman.
    • Barbariccia was an elezen noblewoman whose father was incredibly abusive and controlling, keeping her trapped in their house. One night, she snuck out of her home to visit friends, only to have her father show up and admit to her that he killed her friends and dumped their corpses into a river. Enraged, she picked up a hatchet and spent the rest of the night hacking him to death with it. The last we see of her father, he has the axe embedded in his skull.
  • The first tier of Pandæmonium had already floated the idea that some other forces was messing with the minds of the warders within the facility, as seen when discussing Hesperos' turn from a kindly mentor to an obsessive and twisted evil. The continuation in Abyssos furthers this while adding on doses of Body Horror unseen in Hesperos with the introduction of his female coworkers, Hegemone and Agdistis. Hegemone still retains most of her form, though she is crawling with parasites and slime, including a large toothy mouthed parasitic organism protruding from her shoulder and a large spiked wing from the other. Agdistis, meanwhile, was not as fortunate, being fused with a large tree covered in eyes and mouths along its trunk, to the point where all that remains of the poor woman is her upper torso embedded into the trunk, with her face frozen in an expression of horror.
  • Then there's Hephaistos' One-Winged Angel form in the Savage version. He breaks the chains restraining him, mutating his body even further with his right arm growing way more eyes than it should have and becoming larger than his body, his left one becoming just as long but in a creepy, spindly way, sprouting mismatched wings, his body tearing itself apart to reveal a double-helix, and nothing but a red mask for his face, with veins flowing out like bloody tears. What you get is a horrifyingly grotesque Ascian Prime. All of this Body Horror happens in real-time by the way.
  • Athena's psychopathic dialogue are matched by her expressions, there's just nothing behind her eyes. Her body language is very off-putting and perfectly inline with her words as she speaks about people like tools and implies their value is based solely on their utility to her, even when it comes to family. Of special note is the scene where she is leaning over, her head tilted staring with wide empty eyes and a blank smile at the screen.
    • During the boss fight with her Sepharim-inspired divine form, Theos, the highly melodic and upbeat boss music turns malicious and insidious if you actually pay attention to the lyrics. In a stark contrast to the boss music of the "Myths of the Realm" raid which consists of the Twelve's worshipers singing in joy, this is clearly Athena singing her own song with lyrics that define her obsession for knowledge of all things and power over all, that the sun is setting on creation and all its people, to be replaced and perfected under her hand. She even goes on to refute the existence of all mortals, stating they were "never once truly alive" and as such they are alone with no gods to hear their prayers and hopes, its time to say goodnight as she'll use them as fodder for her perfect existence and new chosen people. All while the song continues to be appealing rhythmic.
  • With the Scions now being able to visit the Thirteenth, home of the Voidsent, it has its own share of nightmares:
    • Because of the chaotic energies that flow through the world, normal beings that wander in there can have their aether horribly twisted and corrupted, which can transform them into Voidsent.
    • Due to the Voidsent being perpetually starved of aether, they'll attack anyone for their aether, including their own kind. Even the somewhat less violent Voidsent won't bother helping anyone unless they are paid in aether, meaning you're sacrificing some of your life force to them and that's assuming they don't just outright take all of your aether.
    • Death doesn't exist on the Thirteenth. Unlike the First whose flood of Light made the world sterile, the Thirteenth's flood of Darkness caused instability, meaning that the world's energy is overactive and souls can't pass onto the next life when they are killed. Due to this, the souls that are eaten by a Voidsent are, in a way, still conscious and there's no way for the Voidsent to filter this out if they are not strong enough. Since Voidsent are made up of many souls, they may not always take on the same form they had previously after dying unless they are very strong.
      • In addition, a Voidsent can still starve to death if they do not consume, they just respawn after some time, assuming their soul isn't consumed by another while "free floating". True pacifism is effectively suicide.
    • Because everyone's out for blood, the Thirteenth is a Death World where there's no sense of unity and it's either kill or be killed. Weaker Voidsent either serve the strong or live in constant hiding so that they aren't eaten by stronger Voidsent, which is their biggest fear.
  • As Zero goes on to describe and remind, the Thirteenth was a normal world like any other Shard. It even had its own parallel races and structure like the First did, and the Ascians messing with it via their usual whispers of power and spreading their creation magicks as summonings. Except unlike the First, apparently they had managed to ward off the Ascians on their own terms. Then humanity used their new darkness-influenced powers and the Eidolon summons left in the Ascian's wake, and as far as Zero is aware, caused the Flood of Darkness themselves through a global conflict of mass destruction. As far as the story's concerned so far, it was not the heroes or the villains doing too good, but the reverse of what happened in the Source: the world's denizens unable to come together and ultimately tearing itself apart, making it a literal Shadow Archetype of the other reflections so far.
  • In the variant dungeon underneath Ul'dah, one of the possible bosses you can fight is the Silke, a giant mouse like familiar with a ball at the tip of its tail. The mount version of the familiar indicates that the actual living being is the ball itself, not the mouse, which means the creature you fought is more like a puppet.
  • The Darkness itself in the Void. It clearly isn't Aether, because if it WAS, why would the Voidsent be starving? However, it can corrupt, and easily at that. The Light was produced by Eden in the 1st... What monstrosity is producing the Darkness? Or is it just its own being entirely?
    • The darkness of the thirteenth is Darkness aspected aether, but it is highly unstable and unsuited for consumption. It is like with how the Sin Eaters couldn't feed of the Aether in the empty, and had to hunt living things for Aether instead. It isn't that the Aether of the void is gone; It is that is in a form that makes it unsuitable for life.
  • The Reveal of Golbez's plans, which isn't simply conquering a planet or anything like what seems to be a Greater-Scope Villain controlling his actions so far: to invade and conquer the Source, which would be tantamount to a calamity of a war between its denizens and the Thirteenth's Voidsent, all so that they can finally die and be properly returned to the Lifestream. This is the first villain who isn't just banking on interference and expecting a battle; he wants the heroes to do what they do best, albeit to the beck and call of his machinations, so that he can finally end his people's eternal suffering once and for all, and to hell with all the possible lost lives in the process.
    • If it isn't bad enough, the end of 6.3's story has a Wham Shot of the throne area Golbez sits within: the equivalent hole in the moon to the Source that presumably holds a sundered remnant of Zodiark. Golbez effectively sits on a fragment of a dead god and might just have what he needs to use it.
  • 6.4 ends with the worst case scenario: After strongarming your way back to the Void, the one you came for, Azdaja, was corrupted into becoming the Shadow Dragon by Golbez. Not even beating him was enough to stop him, as he sacrifices Azdaja into the chasm to awaken Zeromus the final boss of Final Fantasy IV and a powerful voidsent. As Golbez puts it succinctly, we may have won the battle, but right now, he's winning in this war. And right now, there's nothing to be done but retreat. There is the glimmer of hope that she can yet be saved due to the Void preventing true death, but that glimmer is incredibly dim.
  • Even with the Endsinger's defeat, it doesn't kill all the remaining blasphemies, which gets acknowledged if you do the role quests post MSQ. Even with the world saved from destruction, there can still be some blasphemies wandering around and potentially still causing damage or killing people that no one else knows about.

    General 
  • The Empire of Garlemald, hellbent on vengeance against the other countries and species from past prejudices in their bid to Take Over the World. The actions of something like the Gestahl Empire pale in comparison to the sheer number of war crimes, atrocities and horrors inflicted by the Garleans.
    • Genocide of beast tribes simply because they have the potential to summon Primals, subjugation and Fantastic Racism towards all foreigners to bite back over their own treatment, nightmarish experimentation on both foreigner and even their own native citizens to further their military prowess, and creating weapons of mass destruction with full intent to use them against Eorzea. Ala Mhigo even suffers preliminary testing from lethal chemical weapons. And they're hypocritical enough to rely upon aetheric sources and Primal-like power, because it's them using it, not those savages, and get angry about the shedding of Garlean blood yet willingly sacrifice one another for their goals while committing inhumane acts upon prisoners of war.
    • Numerous heads of state and military command are either utterly corrupt in their attempts to prop their careers up, or absolutely batshit insane and nationalistic to the point that they'll kill any and many for the name of their country — even if it includes killing fellow countrymen. All the while, their citizenry are quietly suppressed and unable to speak out against their nation's own barbarism. While many a troop under their command is a Punch-Clock Villain or even straight up an Anti-Villain, the empire itself is perhaps second only to The Emperor's in sheer evil, and the worst of the Empire still surpass him.
    • And this isn't even getting into the revelations of their origins at the end of Stormblood, that mean their overarching goals for domination and their sense of self and pride is all one gigantic Ascian machination to control the world and cause further calamities. All of this horrible suffering is intentional and deliberate, and only a couple people ever knew. Varis himself ends up being the Lesser of Two Evils, and that isn't saying much considering he's the one behind a chemical weapon that can, and in a Bad Future does, end the world, and prefaces his independent motives from Elidibus' by proclaiming he'll make a world of only one true master race by any means necessary.
  • Status ailments are either mildly annoying or can be downright crippling in battle, but stopping to read the description for some of them can be downright terrifying, even though you don't get to see the graphic details:
    • Deep Freeze: You're basically a Human Popsicle.
    • Digestive Fluid: Your body is covered in acid that's breaking down your body.
    • Assimilation: Occurs when fighting the Ozmashade where looking at it during its gaze attack causes your body and mind to slowly become one with it.
    • Gradual Zombification: You're slowly becoming a zombie.
    • Seduced: Your mind is controlled by the enemy.
    • Paralysis: Your nerves are dead, which is why you randomly stop moving.
    • Throttle: Your windpipe is crushed and death will soon follow.
    • Unwilling Host: A parasite controls your body movement and seeks to spread itself to other party members.
    • Miasma: Your lungs are failing.
    • Shifting Sands: Sinking into quicksand, followed by death if you're fully buried.
    • Petrification: You're a rocky statue.
    • Terror: You're so scared out of your wits that you can't do anything.
    • Brink of Death: While the game only states that all your stats are cut by 30% after being revived twice, knowing that your character is so weak that they are on death's doorstep isn't pleasant. What makes this worse is that at the release of Stormblood (4.0): this decrease of stats have been modified at a increase by 20%, making a whopping total of 50%.
    • Acceleration Bomb: You have a bomb stuck to your body that will explode if you move at all when the timer reaches zero.
    • Salted Earth: The ground is so devoid of life that simply standing in it will damage you.
    • Nanoparticles: If the effect stacks too much, your organs and tissue will waste away via atrophy.
    • Chaos: You suffer a mental breakdown while being drawn towards Ramuh.
  • The song "Answers - Reprise" is a short version of "Answers", but with a strong echo and reverb added to the lyrics. The song itself is already pretty intense with the lyrics alone, but having the song play with the added effects just adds to the creepy factor as if you know something terrible is going to happen. The song usually just plays during The Rising event as a tribute to everything that happened before the fall of Dalamud in 1.0, however, it also plays after Illberd begins the summoning of Shinryu, whom he explicitly states to be even stronger than Bahamut. The developers intentionally made the scene similar to events of the Calamity that led to the chaos that was Bahamut, song and all.
  • After a point, particularly the endgame of the main Heavensward storyline, the Warrior of Light is kind of this when you think about it. From Nobody to Nightmare in a heroic situation, a mere adventurer rises up from the aftermath of the Calamity to be a One-Man Army that is capable of slaying basically every force and Primal or other godly equivalent that gets in their way. No one knows who they really are or where they originate from, but by the end of A Realm Reborn, one could make hills from the sheer number of Garleans they slay, and the number racks ever higher as the story progresses. They're such an in-universe terror that numerous enemies begin to fear for their lives at the mere mention of their presence. And when they do appear, entire regimes and decades or even centuries of authority and power collapse within days, usually with every figure responsible dead. By the time Endwalker is kicking up, they've singlehandedly reshaped two entire worlds by influence and action, and show no sign of stopping any time soon even in the face of The End of the World as We Know It, and have become so powerful that they're all but a Physical God by the power standards of the cast. Is it any wonder that Garlemald post-Shadowbringers would rather not fight them?
    • If anything, the Warrior of Light's reputation becomes liability in the later expansions: before the events of A Realm Reborn, the Garleans regarded Eorzeans as primitive savages destined to be sooner or later subjugated like the rest of the conquered nations. By the time the Ilsabard contingent reaches Garlemald, thanks to the WoL and their Scions companions decimating the Garlean legions everywhere they set foot, the Eorzeans are now seen as a murderous barbaric horde about to plunder the weakened Garlean nation, to the point that civilians start -to the shock and horror of the Leveilleur twins- regarding suicidal flights into the frozen wilderness as preferable than staying in the vincinity of Eorzeans. Being the Empire's bogeyman doesn't feel that satisfying when one's mere presence suffices to cause the senseless death of innocents.
  • While framed as a fairly goofy event during and after the duty, All Saint's Wake 2022 sees the Warrior of Light saving the souls of at least 50 unwitting people from being sacrificed to wraiths by Papa Gruff. While the man himself isn't terribly capable of harming the Warrior of Light thanks to a few provisions provided beforehand, the sheer number of victims he's almost able to rack up despite being presented as a gag villain is rather surprising. Worse yet, he, his wife, and child manage to escape, with the implication that they will manage to entrap even more people as the event goes on, though the Adventurer's Guild is at least making pains to pre-empt his attempts at building up more victims.
  • It's thankfully only a What If? scenario, but in The Dragonsong's Reprise, it is suggested that had you been able to save Haurchefant from his Heroic Sacrifice, things would have turned out much, much worse for just about everybody else.
    • Without Haurchefant's death as a motivator, the Warrior of Light may have taken longer to pursue Thordan and the Heavens' Ward to Azys Lla. As a result, they acquire the Allagan technology there and potentially also the power of the Warring Triad, which Thordan then uses to temper the dragons instead of outright slaying them, adding to the difficulty of the ensuing fight.
    • In addition to this, when Nidhogg attacks Ishgard, he brings Hraesvelgr with him, enslaved by Allagan neurolinks. And Hraesvelgr is fully aware of his own actions, and powerless to stop himself from attacking. He outright begs the party not to let him break the vow he made to Shiva - and if anyone dies to his attacks, breaking that vow, he loses his mind with rage and grief and wipes the party. All while unable to control himself.
    Hraesvelgr: I swore to Shiva—swore that I would not take the lives of men... Stop me, I prithee!
    • Then there's the final phase, Dragon-king Thordan. The power of an elder primal is one thing. The power of one tyrannical madman powered by a millennia of prayer, the power of an (unsundered!) Ascian, and both the eyes of Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr, is one whole other doomsday scenario. Consider this actually happening in Heavensward proper, where the Warrior of Light only had just reawakened their Blessing of Light, and didn't have all the experiences until Endwalker. Ishgard was this close to winning the Dragonsong War with catastrophic consequences, with the Warrior of Light probably being a mere footnote in history.
  • The NieR Re[in]carnation crossover event goes into further detail on what Emet-Selch experienced after the sundering. When the world was sundered by Venat, all of the inhabitants were reduced to mere shapeless blobs of aether that could do nothing but moan in pain. Not only did Emet-Selch saw his people get reduced to husks of their former selves, this also included his dear friend Azem (who would become the Warrior of Light in the present time). While the sundered eventually managed to reform and take on the shape of the people seen today, Emet-Selch sees them as completely unrecognizable from the people and friends he used to know. Another terrible part is that the main reason for it is not only modern mankind's ignorance, but first and foremost its penchant for wars and causing each others endless misery due to their conflicts, and in the end it's even what gives the Ascians the idea to cause Chaos to hasten the rejoining. It's little wonder that the Ascian became the dour man the Scions see him as.

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